Sensex choppy with negative bias; banks, realty decline

The Sensex opened the session with a negative bias and was volatile in trade. The markets were consolidating for the third day in a row. Private banking, realty, select infrastructure, oil & gas and auto stocks were under pressure. However, select pharma, power and cement stocks were seeing buying interest.

At 9:56 am, the Sensex was down 40 points at 16,957 and the Nifty declined 9.5 points at 5,045. However, the CNX Midcap rose 14 points at 7,203. About 537 shares advanced while 318 shares declined on the NSE.

Among the frontliners, Infosys, DLF, Jaiprakash Associates, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Axis Bank, Reliance Capital, GAIL, BPCL, ONGC, ABB, M&M, Unitech and BHEL were the losers.

However, Hero Honda, Reliance Power, Suzlon Energy, Ranbaxy Labs, Cipla, Sterlite Industries, Grasim, Tata Motors, Maruti and Jindal Steel & Power were seeing buying interest.

Midcap space:

BPL rose 7% and Samtel gained 4%.

Bharati Shipyard and ABG Shipyard get SEBI nod for open offer for Great Offshore. All three stocks shot up 4-5%.

Varun Shipping and Essar Shipping rose 1-2.5%.

However, Hindustan Motors fell 1%

Global Cues:

Asian markets were trading mixed. Kospi rose 1.1% and Straits Times was up 0.9%. Taiwan Weighted and Jakarta were marginally in the green. However, Nikkei slipped 1.4% and Hang Seng declined 0.4%. Shanghai was flat.

Sensex opened on a negative note today and was low by 81 points. However it closed on a positive note. There are several reasons which are responsible behind these movements in market. Traders sometime fear to trade here because of markets volatile nature.